Sword of the Goddess
by DarkFiresOfTheSoul
Summary: A girl born with the powers of the elements in the ancient world, having sworn to use them only for good. But if the Gods chose her to bear these gifts, she cannot deny a mission commanded of her, even if they go against everything she ever wanted for her life.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Muirne, and I was born of my mother the year of the High Summer. My adopted family clan, the people of the Willows, were the guardians of the Temple of the Wandering Light. I was born in its Sanctuary, covered in wondrous foliage and where the sound of water never ceased. My mother worked in the orchards, tending the great trees and communing with the Elder One. I helped her betimes when the acolytes were separated for special ceremonies.

In my younger days my favorite past time was in the afternoons; Mother would lead me to the river, where the rocks were shaped like bed pallets. We would swim in the brisk cold waters, I would imagine myself a selkie, and laughed as I outpaced my mother's long, gentle strokes, her arms glowing white in and out of the deep blue river. Then we would lie on the warm, broad rocks together, our skin drying and glowing in sunlight, and sing with the birds.

My mother, Aine was her name, was kind and gentle to anyone and everyone. The bastard daughter of a minor lordling mayhap, she was found abandoned by a young acolyte in an old barn just a few moons old and her mother found lying not too far from her buried under piles of old hay. Perhaps they victims to rabid animals of the wild, the young girl thought, but who could say? The acolyte, Stera, took my mother back to the orchards and thus brought her into the folds of the Sisterhood.

She portrayed an exceptional adeptness towards gardening and herb lore, often assisting the elder women in the sick hall. The Eldest, Lady Tersan, adopted my mother as her own on her 12th birthingday, marking her as a woman and the heir to the head of the Sisterhood.

Men were only allowed near the Sanctuary for mere purposes as hard labor help, building new furnishings as needed and re-building older parts of the small castle, and for the one celebration that involved men; The Feast of Beltane on the first day of May. The Great Goddess embraced sexual entwining on this day, and our Ladies obliged her every year. One of the gardeners that shared my mother's passion, Druhan was his name. Hailing from a far, cold land to the east, across the great waters and over tall, vast mountains, was my mother's first union. She was with child soon after, but birthed too early and my brother died too soon before his day. My mother and Druhan never married, but remained close and intimate, against the Eldest's wishes.

Sometime a few years after the failed pregnancy, my mother became with child again around Samhain when the trees shed their old leaves and the winds grew colder, far from tradition of the Ladies. I was born midsummer, but it was not the happy event my parents wished it to be. Tersan told my mother because of her and my father's choice to disobey tradition, she would not follow her as Eldest Lady, and they dismissed my father to never work the Sanctuary again. My mother and I could stay, as we were women, but could never leave past the orchards, nor have contact with the men that were seldom around. We could still work with the other Ladies, though Aine would never advance past the rank of Shine Lady, and live a very good life. But my father's departure broke something in my mother's heart, and eventually she retired to the tower with the other older women. She chose isolation in her grief, and abandoned all hope in seeing him again.

I was eventually allowed to resume my mother's role and duties by the time I had started my woman's courses, and acquired freedom as a reward. I could venture as far as the stone circle above the orchards, which was where I was most often when I wasn't working chores, fulfilling duties for the Mother or Sisters, or in the sick hall. Tersan would join me on occasion as I worked my skills in scrying. She believed I looked for things most did, hidden wells of power the Goddess folded into the Earth, kindred spirits that watched and protected. But that wasn't all I did. Secretly, when she wasn't with me, I scryed out my father and anyone I may be related to in some way.

When I say that, I must explain something. My father was not entirely mortal. The Goddess bestowed lines of power on the peoples of this world, spun secretly hidden and scattered. The line my father descended from had the gift of Wandering. Like the Temple my mother and I served which sheltered the Healers-people with the gift of sewing life and love into others who were on the verge of death-Wandering is the power to leave our flesh and fly the skies-traveling anywhere for missions beyond the mundane. When I was born, my mother's healing skills and my father's Wandering powers created something no one expected. I have the power to manipulate the elements. I can guide the winds to encourage or go, and dance with the rain when I wish. Fire obeys my call and the earth heeds my commands to reproduce lush life or leech nutrients from the fields if I asked it. I reveled in the taste of the power, but do not mistake me, I knew it was not without cost. I felt it deep in my head and in my heart. This gift would kill me one day, should I use it unwisely.

All this I knew, and in that knowledge, I also knew I was dangerous, a living double-edged sword. If the Sanctuary Elders found out, I would be killed. There were legends about figures like me in the parchment scrolls of our small library, old and worn that they were. I had read them all, to Tersan's amusement. It was generally assumed I was merely strengthening my skills of reading and the people's writing. No, oh no. I thirsted to know more of me, and those like me. The last one such as me, or rather as close to me, was a man called Stiofan who lived some 300 years before the Sanctuary was built, a very long time ago. He could command the Earth and the Flame only, but oh the things he did. An ancient lord with many enemies and even more ambition named King Myres found out about his powers and sought him out, convincing him to come and live with him and free him of solitude, but instead of treasuring the poor man, he used him to his own means. King Myres made the man raze castles and lands of his enemies for so many years, until one day Stiofan could no longer endure the evil he had unleashed from his own hands. He set the castle aflame, and climbed to the highest turret of the castle amid the fire, leaping to his death. The Earth rolled, roared, and shook, opening for him as he fell, and swallowed the whole castle and the surrounding lands with him, his corrupt master as well.

There were records of several more such as me, but they could only wield the powers of rain or wind, and were hunted down and killed as creatures of evil. It was then I knew, with my heart breaking, I had to keep my gifts a secret. But someday, I vowed one night in the stone circle to the Goddess, someday I will never fear to be myself and will use my power for good.


	2. Chapter 2

The spring before my 15th birthingyear, my life would change forever. Stories told to all acolytes and temple children that we once thought of as silly and dismissed would become real as the tears on my face, and my life would be entwined with another's; as well as the Goddess's herself.

A week before the Elders held their annual meeting with the outside villages; Tersan and Stera came to me when I was in the scholar's temple, assisting Mother Eydithe with recording that weeks' apple harvest numbers, and bade me accompany them to an audience with an Elder. My painter stick stopped midair, dripping the dark dye onto the records, but I did not care.

"You wish me to do what?" I whispered, my eyes grown huge in my skull. Mother Eydithe rapped my arm with her cane, reprimanding me for my lack of manners. Stera frowned at me.

"Muirne, this is quite a privilege to be present in an audience of one of the Elders! You speak as if we wish you to empty the shit buckets."

Eydithe snorted and grunted like a wiley old hog, mute as she was, appalled that we spoke the way we did in her presence. Tersan just shook her head, loose frays of her graying hair floated around her ears as she did so, making her look like a fae.

"Girl, I'll not tell you again. It's been requested of you, so we go. First, let's out you of that stained smock and get you into something more presentable."

Glancing at Mother Eydithe, who had no sympathy for me and shooed me away, I dropped the painter stick on the board and stood up, looking at everyone defiantly. "Well, if THEY requested ME, then that's what they will get!" and stomped off to my chamber.

Wringing my hands together and pacing in front of my window, as Stera shuffled around my clothing trunk and chattered away about whatever nonsense she was chirping, I began to feel sick, any bravado or bravery I had puffed up in the scholars temple was long gone and left me empty, afraid and faint. Sweat was gathering between my budding breasts and I felt as if I was going to float away.

"Stera… please… why me? I'm… This is me, for pity's sake! The girl who spilled the apple brandy basin all over the banquet table, and the Farsii tribesmen, last Samhain! I can't be seen by the Elders, or anyone they are seeing!"

The acolyte straightened up, an empathetic smile on her face as she held my best gown and mantle in her arms.

"Muirne, has anyone told you what your name means?" she asked, coming to sit near me on the bench under the window, smoothing out the wrinkled gown and laying it under the stiff mantle.

I sighed, irritated. "Of course I know what it means. 'To balance', and the old stories tell of my namesake the princess who stood as the peacekeeper between an angry Goddess and an ambitious King who thought to make himself a God to the people, striking down her sword of fire to the unfaithful and never wavering to remind the man he was only a man. She was the message that the Goddess would reward him in good faith if he remembered to curb that ambition. The peacekeeper and the King fell in love, and she died protecting him from a corrupt Lord vying for her hand and the kingdom. The Goddess in her compassion for her one true servant descended from the Heavens and transformed her body into a lake surrounding his castle so she could go on protecting him and the land even in death. No one can find her Lake because no one has been worthy to lay claim to the sword, the castle and the Crown left behind."

Laying back on my pallet, I blew my breath out and stared at the ceiling of my room. "As if I could ever become anything near my namesake…" I whispered bitterly, "I'm not even pretty…"

My pallet shifted as Stera sat down next to me, and ran her fingers through my dark red hair, flung over my outstretched arms.

"Muirne… you've never seen your face when you are happy. Your blue eyes deepen to out-color the deepest part of the river, your face even with its new cream skin has an apple glow upon your cheeks, and your laughter rings up and down the halls like bells. No one tells you this because you're so damned firey in your moods. I recall a few moons back, you were so angry with the kitchen boy for dropping a bowl of milk and honey on your shoulder as he walked by you in the dine hall, all of the torches outside the main hall burst out of their iron holding and almost lit the stablemen on fire who was standing nearby."

I stiffened at her words, like a rabbit preparing to bolt, and avoided her gaze. She tugged on a lock of my hair nearest my left ear and bade me look at her. I glanced slowly up at her, and she was serious faced, her eyes betraying the tiny lines etched on each side showing early aging.

"You know why that happened, don't you?" she whispered. "Tersan and the Elders were arguing for hours about it, not knowing how it happened, if a servant had used too much oil on the wood."

I bit the inside of my cheek, a bad habit when I was caught in a lie that everyone could see, my cheek just slightly indented.

"I don't know what you mean, Stera… I only heard about it later as I was scrubbing the blasted honey out of my mantle. The poor stableman can never use his right arm again…" I trailed off, trying not to bring my arms down across me and hold myself as I do when I am desperate or sad.

Stera stared hard at me, seeing right through my façade, but sighed and stood up.

"Brush and plait your hair. I need to shake your gown out, as it looks you did not seem to do it last time you wore it. And wear slippers, for Goddess's sake, Edythe will have our arses if she catches you running around barefoot anymore. You are 14 now!"


End file.
